Hurricane Resurgence – A Storm Recovery Tabletop Exercise

Exercise Overview

The Gulf County Emergency Management Department undertook an initiative to assess the ability of the county to recover from a powerful hurricane making landfall along the county’s shoreline. Entitled “Hurricane Resurgence” the exercise had various members of the County Emergency Response Team working through the challenges of recovering from such a disaster.

From assessing and managing local resources to establishing and maintaining long-term sheltering, city and county along with community and faith based organizations had their hands full bringing Gulf County back to life.

Exercise Scenario

It is early July and local citizens have been following the approach of Hurricane Resurgence as it moves through the eastern portion of the Gulf of Mexico. Projections from the National Hurricane Center indicate that the storm will make a left turn and head towards Texas.

The turn to the west never comes and in the early morning hours the storm slams into the county’s coastline with strong category two winds and a storm surge on top of a high tide.

After the first several days of life safety response activities, the pace of the various government along with community and faith based organizations begins to transition from 24 hour a day operations to dawn to dusk recovery activities.